Three days later;
Just like every day, in the morning, Karna stepped out of the palace gates alone—no guards, no fanfare—and walked the streets like any other man.
This morning, the sun had barely cleared the eastern wall when he turned down the potter's lane. Smoke curled from the kilns, thick with the smell of wet clay and burning wood. Old Ramu sat cross-legged on the ground, hands shaping a wide water pot on his wheel. His fingers moved with the same sure rhythm they had for forty years.
Karna stopped and crouched beside him.
"Ramu-ji," he said warmly, "that glaze you tried last month… the one with the river mud and ash—did it hold on the big vessels?"
Ramu looked up, startled for half a heartbeat, then his weathered face cracked into a gap-toothed grin.
"Maharaj! You remembered the name of the glaze?" He wiped clay-dusted hands on his dhoti. "Yes, yes—it didn't crack even once. The big pots for the temple are holding water like they were born sealed. My son says we owe you thanks for telling us to mix in more ash."
Karna laughed softly. "I only give the instruction. You're the one who made it work."
A few steps farther, near the open grazing patch by the riverbank, cowherd boy Gopal was leading a small herd of spotted cows toward fresh grass. The boy straightened when he saw Karna approaching, suddenly shy.
"Gopal," Karna called, raising a hand. "How's your little sister's cough? Did the tulsi-honey mixture help?"
The boy's eyes widened. "Y-yes, Maharaj. She's running around again today. Mother says it was your suggestion that saved her sleep."
Karna ruffled the boy's hair gently. "Tell your mother I said she's doing good work keeping all of you strong. And if the cough comes back, don't forget to visit the Healing Center."
Gopal nodded so hard his turban nearly slipped.
Karna kept walking, greeting weavers by their looms, fish-sellers at the market edge, washermen beating clothes against stones in the shallows. He remembered names, ailments, small joys, and small sorrows. To them, he wasn't just the king—he was the man who listened, who cared enough to ask their problems and even solve them, something that not even their own families seldom inquire daily.
Near the wide lake at the edge of the city, where lotus leaves floated like green coins, a group of children played.
Eight or nine of them, ages five to ten, laughing and shouting as they kicked a ball made of tightly wound yarn stuffed with cotton and grains. The ball bounced high, sailed in a perfect arc—then dropped straight into the deep well beside the lake.
The children froze. Their laughter died. They clustered at the well's stone rim, peering down into the dark water with worried faces.
Karna, a little way off, shook his head with a small smile and walked over.
The children noticed him late. One by one, their heads turned. Eyes went round. Mouths opened. They had seen their king from afar during festivals, riding in the chariot or standing on the palace balcony, but never this close, never alone, never looking at them like they mattered.
One brave girl, no more than seven, stepped forward. "Maharaj… our ball fell in."
Karna crouched so he was eye-level with them. "Did you want help getting it out?"
They nodded in unison, hesitant, awestruck.
Karna straightened. He raised his right hand toward the well and opened his palm. His eyes closed for just a moment. A soft golden glow bloomed around his fingers—warm, gentle, like sunlight breaking through morning mist. The children gasped.
In the next instant, the yarn ball rose smoothly from the water, dripping, spinning slowly in the air. It floated toward Karna's waiting hand and settled lightly in his palm.
"Woah…" The word escaped from half a dozen mouths at once.
Karna chuckled, low and easy. He turned the ball over in his fingers, feeling the rough yarn, the slight weight of the grains inside.
A thought crossed his mind. He looked down at the wide-eyed faces around him.
"Come," he said. "Let's play."
The children stared, not sure they had heard right.
Karna grinned. "Seven stones instead of five stones. Who wants to be on my side?"
Shouts erupted at once. Hands shot up. They ran to gather flat stones from the lakeside—seven smooth ones, stacked carefully in a small pyramid twenty feet away from a wide circle scratched into the dirt with a stick. Karna joined them, rolling up his sleeves, kicking off his sandals so he stood barefoot on the warm earth.
They divided quickly—Karna with the smaller children, the older ones forming the other team.
Rules were shouted and agreed on in excited voices: one team throws the ball to scatter the stones; the other has to rebuild the pyramid while dodging hits from the ball. Anyone touched by the ball while running is out.
The game began.
Karna threw first—just gentle enough to send the stones flying in every direction. Laughter exploded. Children dashed forward, scrambling to stack the stones again while the other team hurled the yarn ball, aiming for legs and backs.
Karna ran with them, ducking low when the ball came his way, scooping up a stone and placing it carefully on the pile, shouting encouragement.
"Faster, Meera! Put that one on top—yes, like that!"
"Watch your left, Arjun—here it comes!"
He laughed when a small boy tagged him square in the shoulder with the ball. "Out! I'm out!" he declared dramatically, throwing his hands up and flopping onto the grass in mock defeat. The children cheered and piled on top of him, giggling.
From the edges of the field, adults had begun to gather—potters pausing their wheels, cowherds leaning on their sticks, women with water pots balanced on their hips. They watched in quiet wonder.
There he was: Karna, son of Suryanarayana, king of Dakshina Kalinga, and yet here he knelt in the dirt, barefoot, laughing like a boy no older than the children around him. No crown. No throne. No distance of caste or status. He treated the potter's son and the weaver's daughter the same as he would treat even princes.
One older woman, wiping her hands on her saree, murmured to her neighbor, "Look at him. The king himself, playing seven stones like he has nowhere else to be."
A potter standing nearby nodded slowly. "Our King is truly someone Lord Narayana has sent into our lives."
Another voice, soft with something close to reverence: "We were truly lucky to be living here."
The game was in full swing. Dust kicked up in small clouds around the circle of stones. Children shouted and darted, the yarn ball flying back and forth like a living thing.
Karna crouched low, one hand on the ground for balance, the other reaching to stack the last stone back on the pyramid. His team was winning—barely—and the grin on his face was wide and unguarded, the same grin he'd worn as a boy running through fields with no crown in sight.
He placed the stone. It clicked into place.
Just then, his expression changed.
One moment, he was laughing; the next, his eyes sharpened, head snapping toward the northern edge of the city where the main gates stood.
Something tugged at him—a ripple deep in his awareness. The barrier he had woven around Kanipura two years ago hummed with sudden discord. It wasn't a physical attack on the batter. This was darker.
As Karna deeply concentrated, connecting his consciousness to the barrier, a yarn ball struck him square in the chest with a soft thump.
"Out! Out! Out!" The children on the other team jumped up and down, fists pumping, voices high with triumph.
Karna blinked once, then let out a quiet laugh that didn't quite reach his eyes. He straightened, brushing dust from his dhoti.
"You got me fair," he said, raising both hands in surrender. "Keep playing. Don't stop on my account."
The children hesitated, sensing the shift in him. One small girl tugged at his anga-vastra. "Maharaj… are you coming back?"
"Soon," he promised, ruffling her hair. "Finish the game for me."
He turned and started walking toward the direction the disturbance had come from. Behind him, the laughter picked up again, tentative at first, then full-throated. The adults watching exchanged glances but said nothing. They turned a bit worried when they saw that look on their king's face.
Halfway down the wide dirt road that led from the lake toward the city gates, Karna slowed. His eyes narrowed. Far ahead, a plume of dust rose like smoke from a hidden fire. Something large moved through it—fast.
Then the bull appeared.
It was no ordinary animal. Bigger than any bull in the kingdom—twice the size of the strongest oxen used for plowing. Horns curved wickedly forward, black as obsidian. Muscles rolled under its hide like coiled ropes. Its eyes burned red in fury.
As the bull spotted Karna, it huffed once, steam curling from wide nostrils, then lowered its head and charged.
People on the roadside screamed. "Maharaj!" "Run!" A woman dropped her water pot; it shattered on the stones. Children who had followed at a distance froze, hands over mouths.
Karna didn't move a bit and instead raised his right hand. In the next breath, Vijayadhanush materialized in his hand. The string sang faintly as he drew it back.
The bull reached him in seconds, horns lowered to gore, hooves thundering. Karna dodged the attack by leaping high before twisting mid-air.
His body inverted above the charging beast, feet pointing skyward. As the bull passed beneath him, its horns slicing empty air where he had stood, in his fingertips, an arrow took shape made of pure divine energy.
He loosed it without hesitation.
*Swoosh*